Christina of Lorraine, Regent of Tuscany

Christina of Lorraine, Grand Duchess and Co-Regent of Tuscany (died 19 December 1637)

If you've studied Galileo Galei, chances are you have encountered his Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (1615), in which he defends himself and his scientific views in a carefully worded explanation of the relationship between science and religion--specifically, the Catholic religion and religious authority. 

Christina of Lorraine, as Grand Duchess,
c. 1588

The woman to whom he addressed this letter is Christina of Lorraine, then regent of Tuscany. As Grand Duchess of Tuscany, she had been married to Ferdinando, Grand Duke of Tuscany, head of the Medici family. After his death in 1609, her son Cosimo assumed his father's title, but when Cosimo died in 1621, Christina and her daughter-in-law, Maria Magdalena, became co-regents for Christina's grandson, then ten years old.

Christina was well-prepared for her role. She was the favorite granddaughter of Catherine de' Medici, who had served as regent of France on many occasions, notably the minority of her son, Charles IX (1560-63), and, after his death, before Henry III succeeded to the throne. Christina's paternal grandmother, Christine of Denmark, had been regent of Lorraine for her son (Christina's father) from 1545 to 1552, during his minority. 

And so the Dowager Duchess of Tuscany was not unfamiliar with the role of the regent. She and her daughter-in-law coordinated their efforts and, despite the insults of contemporary chroniclers, they managed their partnership without conflict or dispute.

With an exceptional education overseen by Catherine de' Medici, Christina of Lorraine was a notable patron of both science and religion. It was she who invited Galileo to the Tuscan court in 1605, where he became the tutor of her son, Cosimo. When he discovered the moons of Jupiter, the "Medicean stars," Galileo named them after Christina's sons.

As a religious patron, Christina was a supporter of a number of institutions, especially female monasteries. 

Born in Nancy on 16 August 1565, Christina of Lorraine, Dowager Duchess of Tuscany, died at the age of 72 on 19 December 1637.

For an excellent essay, see the entry in Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia, which you can access by clicking here.

Maria Magdalena of Austria, Regent of Tuscany

Maria Magdalena of Austria, Grand Duchess and Co-Regent of Tuscany (died 1 November 1631)*

Born in the city of Graz on 7 October 1589, Maria Magdalena of Austria was a member of the Habsburg family, the royal house that ruled over a vast empire in Europe and the Americas. 

Maria Magdalena of Austria,
grand duchess of Tuscany, c. 1603
portrait by Frans Pourbus the Younger

Maria Magdalena was daughter of Charles II, archduke of Austria, and his wife, Maria Anna of Bavaria--who was also Charles II's niece. Yes, another good example of traditional marriage: Maria Anna of Bavaria was the daughter of her husband's sister, Anna of Austria. Got that? (Keeping marriage in the family was a favorite Habsburg strategy, as I've noted before on this blog.) 

Maria Magdalena was also the fourteenth of the fifteen children born to the couple, thirteen of whom survived infancy.

She was well educated, taught by Jesuit instructors, her course of studies including Latin. Her father's court was deeply religious, Charles II a keen defender and promoter of the Catholic Reformation. Music played an important role in the court, and Maria Magdalena also performed in "didactic plays," based on the lives of saints. 

In 1608, when she was nineteen years old, Maria Magdalena was married to Cosimo II de' Medici, who would become the grand duke of Tuscany the next year. Between August 1609 and November 1617--just over eight years--she gave birth to eight children, all of whom survived infancy. (Although her first child, a girl, is believed to have suffered from some kind of physical or mental disability.)

Maria Magdalena's husband died when her eldest son, Ferdinando II, was just ten years old. And so, Maria Magdalena and her mother-in-law, Christina of Lorraine, became co-regents of Tuscany. 

In her recent discussion of Maria Magdalena of Austria, Maria Galli Stampino surveys the overwhelmingly negative views of Maria Magdalena's co-regency--though it is important to note that these are historians' views and not those of the regent's contemporaries. Her contemporaries keep up a detailed commentary on what's happening at court--later historians mark her regency as the beginning of the end of Florence. 

Maria Magdalena of Austria,
regent of Tuscany, c. 1621

As early as the eighteenth-century, an Italian historian decided that "everything started to decline from the moment of Cosimo II's death." As recently as 2008, the judgment is still the same: "the regency marked the beginning of the downward slope of the Medici government."

Maria Magdalena was too religious, too stern, too given to "magnificence," too dull and boring (yes, she is criticized for spending too much on lavish display and for not spending enough on lavish entertainment), too powerful, too influential over her son, 

She was said to be "despotic," "arbitrary," "nefarious," and "sanctimonious." Most important, she and her mother-in-law were both female and foreign. As the historian J. R. Hale concluded in his history of Florence and the Medici, "For the first time Medici rule was woman-ridden not by mistresses, anxious to please, but by viragos, determined to dominate." You can get a similar taste of this virulent attitude toward Maria Magdalena by looking at the Encyclopedia Britannica entry for her son (click here)

All that said, in her role as co-regent, Maria Magdalena developed a foreign policy that favored both the papacy and Habsburg politics. She performed charitable works. She continued her husband's support for Galileo. (A support that would be continued by her son, once he succeeded as grand duke.) She was a great patron of music and painting. And, notably, she did not lead Florence into war. Instead, she, her mother-in-law, and son got along harmoniously

Nor did she overthrow the state--her son, Ferdinando II, quietly succeeded as grand duke of Tuscany when he reached his majority at age eighteen. For many historians, that stability is also bad--he carried on his mother's policies, the people of Florence growing disappointed when "they realized that nothing had changed after his formal accession to power." 

In 1631, leaving Florence under the personal rule of her son, Grand Duke Ferdinando II, Maria Magdalena visited the Habsburg court in Vienna, where her oldest brother was now Holy Roman Emperor. She traveled with two of her sons, Mattias and Francesco, and after stops in Italy, visited her brother Leopold, archduke of Austria, in Innsbruck. She became ill on her way to Passau, Germany and died there on 1 November 1631. She was forty-two years old. 

Her body was returned to Florence. She is buried in the Medici Chapels, adjoining the Basilica of San Lorenzo.

(Maria Magdalena's daughter, Margherita de' Medici, became duchess of Parma, and, like her mother before her, she served as regent for her minor son.**)

Maria Galli Stampino's essay, "Maria Magdalena of Austria and Grand Duchess of Florence: Negotiating Performance, Traditions, and Taste," is in Early Modern Habsburg Women: Transnational Contexts, Cultural Conflicts, and Dynastic Continuities, ed. Anna Cruz and Maria Galli Stampino. I have used Stampino's excellent biographical information here, and I highly recommend her thorough summary and analysis of three centuries of critical assessments of Maria Magdalena's regency by historians. 

For online reading, I recommend Laura York's entry on Maria Magdalena in Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia.

*Although her name is frequently given as "Maddalena," she herself always signed "Magdalena."

**Another of Maria Anna of Bavaria's daughters, Anne, married Sigismund Vasa, king of Sweden and Poland--after Anne's death, Sigismund Vasa married her younger sister, Constance. More traditional marriage.

Francesca Caccini, Composer, Singer, Poet, Teacher

Francesca Caccini (born 18 September 1587)

Francesca Caccini was born into a musical family: her father, Giulio Romolo Caccini, was a performer and composer for the Medici court, particularly supported by Francesco de' Medici, grand duke of Florence; Francesca's mother, Lucia Gagnolanti, her younger sister, Settimania, and, eventually, her step-mother (Giulio's second wife), Margherita della Scala, were also noted performers, the women sometimes performing together, at times referred to as "le donne di Giulio Romo[l]o."

A cameo engraving of 
Francesca Caccini

Francesca Caccini not only received an excellent and multi-faceted musical education--as a virtuosa singer and performer, who played guitar, lute, harp, and keyboard--but also a literary education. She studied the classical languages, modern languages and literature, and mathematics. 

In 1604, she traveled with her family to the court of Henry IV of France--the queen, Marie de' Medici, offered Francesca a place as an official court singer, which included a salary and a substantial dowry.

However, Francesca was not released from the service of the grand duke, so, along with her family, she returned to the Florentine court, where she remained as a performer, composer, and teacher until 1627.

In Florence, she was also able to enjoy the patronage of two powerful women, the Grand Duchess Christina of Lorraine and her daughter-in-law, Maria Maddalena of Austria. Christina of Lorraine was the granddaughter of the French queen Catherine de' Medici, Maria Maddalena the granddaughter of Anna Jagiellon, queen of Poland. The two women together, as the "Tutrici," were acting as regents of Tuscany following the Francesco's death.

At the Medici court, Francesca Caccini married Giovanni Batista Signorini in 1607, giving birth to Margherita, named after Caccini's stepmother, in 1622. In 1626, after the death of her husband, Caccini left Florence for Lucca, where she married again and where, in 1628, gave birth to a son, named Tomaso Raffaelo, after his father. 

Widowed in 1634, Francesca and her children returned to Florence, where she again entered the service of the Grand Duchess Christina of Lorraine. Although Maria Maddalena had died in 1631, and her son, Ferdinando II had married in 1633 (making Vittoria della Rovere the new grand duchess), Christina of Lorraine remained very influential at the Medici court until her death at the end of 1637.

Caccini and her daughter performed together at the court of the grand duchess, but in 1638, worried about the effect it might have on her daughter's reputation, Francesca refused to allow her daughter to perform publicly in a commedia; in 1642 Margherita Signorini became a nun in the Franciscan convent of San Girolomo in Florence, a convent known for its music and, despite edicts of the Inquisition, for public performances by the convent's inhabitants.

There, according to one contemporary observer, "crowds raced to hear her sing divine praises by herself, and sometimes in ensemble with other skilled virgins who are her companions, notwithstanding the church's inconvenient location on a steep hill."

(In the 1660s and 1670s, Margherita Signorini taught many young women being educated in the convent, including her niece, Maria Francesca Rafaelli, as well as several young women who would go on to serve in the court of the Grand Duchess Vittoria della Rovere. Margheriti Signorini died in 1689.)

Francesca Caccini is "the most prolific composer of her time," and the first woman known to have composed opera. In 1618 she published The First Book of Music for One and Two Voices (II primo libro delle musiche a una e due voci), a collection of thirty-two solo songs and four duets for soprano and bass voices. But only one opera survives, The Liberation of Ruggiora from the Island of Alcina (La liberazione di Ruggiero dall'isola d'Alcina), commissioned by Maria Maddalena of Austria and first performed on 3 February, 1625. 

Francesca Caccini's date of death is unknown, though guardianship of her son was transferred to Girolomo Raffaeli, her husband's brother, in February 1645, suggesting a likely date for Caccini's death.

For Francesca Caccini's biographical entry in The Norton/Grove Dictionary of Women Composers, click here. This entry includes a comprehensive list of Caccini's known works, including those that have not survived, as well as an excellent bibliography.

Nate Zuckerman's biographical essay, from Italian Women Writers, is available here. But long before the Internet made information available with the click of a mouse, I discovered Francesca Caccini in Diane Peacock Jezic's Women Composers: The Lost Tradition Found, first published by The Feminist Press in 1988.

There are also a couple of excellent performances available on YouTube, such as this one or this, an instrumental featuring guitar, violin, harpsichord, and viola da gamba.